ST. LOUIS — So this is what the dog days feel like.

The Red Sox played a decent game but lost to a good team and a great pitcher in the rubber game at Busch Stadium Thursday night. The score was something like 5-2.

In the position the Red Sox find themselves in this August, there are games out of which real meaning can be extrapolated — a debut performance for a new pitcher like Wednesday or an ugly performance for an old one like Sunday.

Then there are games for which the word unremarkable applies, in the literal sense. That was Thursday, in which persistent trends persisted, and little new could be learned.

In so many games for the rest of this season, the first thing worth examining will be the starting pitcher. Brandon Workman looked on Thursday as he has for most of the last two months or so, which is to say a tad off. A pitch here, an inning there keep derailing otherwise solid outings.

On Thursday, as it has been at other points this season, the first inning was the issue.

A leadoff walk and a single put two on with none out, and they moved up on a double steal. With two outs, on the verge of escaping, Workman’s 1-1 fastball was smashed to right-center by Jhonny peralta, one-hopping the wall to score two. Peralta had just been badly beaten in the same spot by a fastball. He caught up the second time around.

Oscar Taveras followed with a single through the right side to score a third run. The Cardinals, as it turned out, had all they’d need.

“I just didn’t come out sharp in the first inning. That got me today,” said Workman. “I put the team behind the 8-ball against a good pitcher. I got it going after that, but the first inning was enough.”

Workman has allowed a dozen first-inning runs in 10 starts for the Red Sox this season.

“It’s kind of notorious in his career. We’ve seen it this season,” manager John Farrell said of Workman’s first-inning woes. “It’s a matter of him getting in the flow of the game.”

He was good from that point forward, retiring nine Cardinals in a row at one point. That streak was broken, emphatically, by Kolten Wong’s line-drive homer to right in the fifth. Workman has yielded 17 home runs this season between Pawtucket and Boston.

Workman didn’t allow more than three runs in his first eight big-league starts. He’s given up at least four in each of his last five trips to the major-league mound — all of them losses. Boston is 2-8 this season when he throws its first pitch.

Wong added another homer — his eighth in the last 32 days — off Craig Breslow in the seventh. A year after excelling as an unsung hero out of the Boston bullpen, Breslow has never found a rhythm. Thursday marked the fourth straight outing in which he’d allowed a run and third straight he’d allowed a home run. His ERA on the season has climbed above five; he’s never had a major-league year where it was above four.

Breslow is walking hitters at roughly twice the rate he did last season; he’s allowed twice as many home runs in 19 fewer innings.

“He hasn’t been able to get away with a mistake,” said Farrell.

The offense managed seven hits off Adam Wainwright in seven innings, even bunching four of them together in a two-run third inning. Only one of those knocks went for extra bases, however, and Wainwright was able to limit the damage the way an ace does.

After a pair of losses in last year’s World Series, Wainwright picked up his major-league-leading 14th win Thursday.